​Department of Energy Sponsored Accelerator Symposium

November 2009

The Symposium on Accelerators for America’s Future was held October 26th through October 28th, 2009 in Washington D.C. The symposium’s stated purpose was to “examine the challenges for identifying, developing and deploying accelerators to meet the nation’s needs in basic science, medicine, energy and the environment, national security, and industry.” Over 350 attendees listened as experts from industry and academia spoke not only of past and present uses of accelerator technology but future applications. These presentations on the first day of the event laid the groundwork for the two-day workshop that followed.

The Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science sponsored the symposium. Dennis Kovar, Director of the DOE’s Office of High Energy Physics defined the purpose of the five workshop working groups in discovery science, medicine and biology, energy and environment, national security, and industrial applications and production. According to his presentation the workshop was to “propose a mechanism for collecting the information and generating a report that will: identify current and future needs of stakeholders, seek out crosscutting challenges—technical, cost, policy—whose solutions may have transformative impacts on opportunities for the future, identify the areas of accelerator R&D that hold the greatest promise, provide guidance to bridge the gap between basic accelerator research and technology deployment.” The working groups were given a deadline to produce a final draft report by December 1, 2009. The final report will released January 1, 2010.

​The entire first day’s presentations are available on the symposium’s website. The website not only contains the power point presentations but video of the presentations. This website is a great resource if you are interested in this subject but were unable to attend the symposium.